JIG FOR MAKING NARROW STRIPS OF BINDING

I'm making copies of an 1890's 0-28, and a 1924 00-42. They both have strips of 0.040 ivoroid in the sound hole rosette. The binding I have is the right thickness, but 1/4 inch wide. I made a jig to hold the binding and then used a flush cutting router to cut away half the stock. It worked, but made a terrible mess, and I lost half of the strip. I then tried to make a jig to split it in half with an Exacto blade. Terrible!! I finally came up with this jig, using a thin Dremel circular saw. I used a piece of oak scrap and glued two popsicle sticks to it, spaced 0.040 apart. Then planed the popsicle sticks down to almost the 0.040. These are a guide for the ivoroid strip. Next, drilled a 1/8 inch hole about 1/4 inch down from the top of the jig, and all the way through the oak. The saw has a 1/8 inch shaft. Turning the jig over, and using the 1/8 inch hole as a guide, I drilled out a hole for the blade, using a 1 inch Forstner bit. You need to keep checking the depth of this hole so that the blade ends up centered between the two popsicle sticks. I also added a small washer inside and out. The only expense was $2.20 for a shaft collar that tightens on the saw shaft with an Allen wrench. I added a small dab of grease to the shaft and the washers. A lid over the popsicle sticks keeps everything lined up. The jig makes a very thin clean cut. The cut can be varied by adding more washers.

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Permalink Reply by George Roberts on November 25, 2015 at 1:15pm

More pictures:

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Permalink Reply by George Roberts on November 25, 2015 at 1:16pm

Hope I'm not re-inventing the wheel, here.

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Permalink Reply by sylvan on November 25, 2015 at 1:47pm

Nice job!

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Permalink Reply by Mark McLean on November 26, 2015 at 11:35am

That is a very neat solution to the problem. Must be very satisfying!

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Permalink Reply by Frank Ford on November 27, 2015 at 10:49am

Slick, and simple - way to go!

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Permalink Reply by Andrew on November 29, 2015 at 3:00pm

Thats a nice little setup. Wouldnt take much to add adjustable fences and some dust collection.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Fogleman on November 29, 2015 at 6:34pm

Most excellent! This will come in handy.

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Permalink Reply by George Roberts on December 3, 2015 at 6:06pm

Hey everyone, Thanks for the positive feedback. I did notice a typo. The two popsicle sticks were glued down 1/4 inch apart (actually 0.260) instead of 0.040 apart. The other problem that I found was that the saw blade I used was one that used to come as a standard accessory with a Dremel tool. It has a blade that is blued steel, 0.006 thick, and has about 32 teeth per inch. When checking at my local hardware and at Home Depot, I couldn't find the same saw blade. I also tried looking on line, but without any success. I found 2 more, similar saw blades in my dad's old box of Dremel accessories. I hope that they are more available than that.